After the release of the premiere trailer for Pragmata, many critics compared it to Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding – partially because it featured high-tech explorers and invisible ghost enemies, but also because it was full of surreal game footage depicting inexplicable events. After reviewing all the press releases and clues seen in the trailer, Pragmata's true premise is still quite mysterious, but more clear than it seems at first glance.
By the end of the trailer for Pragmata, a viewer will naturally have many, many questions. Why is an astronaut marching through an empty urban metropolis? Who is that little girl? Why is there a skinless holographic cat? Why are the buildings getting all twisted and pixellated? Why is a space station falling from the broken sky? Why are the main characters getting sucked up into the air? Why are they suddenly on the Moon?
Beyond being weird and surreal, there's good reasons for gamers to compare Capcom's new game Pragmata to Death Stranding, a Kojima Productions-developed walk simulator. Just as the story of Death Stranding is centered around courier Sam Bridges and his ghost-detecting tank baby, the plot of Pragmata seems to revolve around a so-far unnamed astronaut and a young, not entirely human schoolgirl who follows him around. That being said, if the goal of the protagonists of Death Stranding was to restore the fractured United States, what are the goals of the astronaut and girl in Pragmata?
Pragmata's Story & Premise: Official Info & Theories
The official YouTube page for the Pragmata premiere trailer describes the game as a "breathtaking dystopian world." At the end of the trailer, the Astronaut and the girl stand on the surface of the Moon and look up towards the Earth, which the Astronaut describes as "Freedom. Our Freedom." From this concrete clue, plus footage seen throughout the trailer, a somewhat coherent narrative begins to form.
The story of Pragmata will likely take place on the Moon, alternating between excursions on the desolate lunar surface and exploration of a vast underground lunar complex filled with skyscrapers, cars, and domes with digital screens that simulate the sky. Viewers who carefully re-watch the trailer can see the Astronaut and girl go flying out of a hole in a dome near the end. The girl who works with the Astronaut is likely a robot or artificial intelligence of some kind, judging by her synthetic voice, cybernetic eyes, and ability to instantly commandeer the astronaut's backpack equipment module. Finally, the society within Capcom's new game's lunar colony seems to have turned oppressive, apocalyptic, or a mix of both, inspiring the main characters to escape this closed system and return to earth.
What We Know About Pragmata's Gameplay
Through the trailer, the Astronaut is never seen acting like a Space Marine in the vein of games like DOOM Eternal or Halo. They don't pull out an assault rifle and go to town on bug-eyed aliens or killer robots. Much of the equipment they use seems to be scientific or survival-oriented: a scanner and dust-bomb to detect hidden objects, a rope bubble to shield against falling debris, etc. These two factors strongly imply that combat will take a back seat to exploration, survival and puzzle-solving in Pragmata.
It's likely the Astronaut in this game will investigate Pragmata's world, deploy helpful tools, and escape dangerous perils like falling space stations. The unnamed girl, on the other hand, will hack into computer databases, manipulate holograms/corrupted technology, and gather information on the nature of the colony they're trying to escape.
All in all, Pragmata has a lot of potential, doubly so for being so mysterious and recently revealed. Set to be released in 2022 for the next generation of consoles, Capcom has plenty of time to refine Pragmata's gameplay and level design, creating an experience that could be a gripping dystopian sci-fi adventure, a surreal allegory like Death Stranding, or something else entirely.